Chapter 2
The clash of steel against steel rings across Silverbrook crossing like a death knell, punctuated by the screams of dying men and the thunder of hooves on packed earth.
Bellamy's sword sings as he parries a barbarian's axe, the impact rattling up his arm and into his shoulder.
He ripostes quickly, his blade finding the gap between his opponent's leather armor, and the man falls with a gurgle of blood.
"Stay together!" Harwick's voice booms somewhere to his left, but the carefully planned formation has dissolved into chaos within minutes of the battle's start.
The Barbarian King's forces have hit them like a black tide, and now Mirn's soldiers fight in scattered pockets, trying to hold ground that seems to shift beneath their feet with each fallen body.
Bellamy ducks under a swing that would have taken his head off, his helm knocked askew by a glancing blow.
Sweat stings his eyes as he straightens it, trying to keep track of the battle around him.
They are outnumbered worse than Harwick had estimated—closer to three and a half thousand, maybe more.
Foreign warriors with painted faces and wickedly curved blades fight alongside Everitt soldiers in black mail, and they move with the coordination of an army that has fought together through countless campaigns.
A horse screams nearby. Bellamy spins to see one of his cavalry officers pulled from his mount by three barbarians, disappearing beneath their blades. The sight sends ice through his veins, but he forces himself to focus, to keep moving, to keep fighting.
That is when he sees him.
The Barbarian King cuts through the melee like a force of nature, and Bellamy's breath catches in his throat.
The stories haven't been exaggerated—if anything, they've fallen short.
Ivah stands nearly seven feet tall, his shoulders broad as a doorway, his arms corded with muscle beneath dark leather and steel.
His black hair is bound back in a warrior's knot, and twin axes dance in his hands as if they weigh nothing at all.
But it is his eyes that make Bellamy's blood run cold. Even at a distance, even through the chaos of battle, they burn like embers in a face that could have been carved from granite. This isn't a man. This is something primal and terrible, a creature born for war and death.
As Bellamy watches, transfixed despite himself, Ivah buries one axe in a soldier's shield, splintering the wood, then brings the other around in a devastating arc that cleaves through mail and flesh alike.
The man falls in pieces, and Ivah steps over him without a glance, his burning gaze already fixed on his next target.
He is magnificent in the way a wildfire is: beautiful, uncontrollable and utterly destructive.
"Bellamy!" Harwick's shout snaps him back to the present.
A barbarian with filed teeth is charging him, war hammer raised.
Bellamy sidesteps and lets the man's momentum carry him past, then drives his sword between his shoulder blades.
The barbarian falls face-first into the mud, blood pooling beneath him.
"We need to fall back!" Harwick fights his way to Bellamy's side, his own blade slick with gore. "This is a slaughter!"
Bellamy wants to argue, but he can see the truth of it. Mirn's forces are brave, well-trained, and disciplined, but they are being systematically destroyed. Bodies in gold and blue litter the field, while the enemy seems to multiply with every passing moment.
"Sound the retreat," Bellamy says, even though the words sound reluctant even to his own ears.
But before Harwick can relay the order, a shadow falls across them. Bellamy looks up to see the Barbarian King striding toward them through the carnage, his axes dripping crimson, his dark eyes fixed on Bellamy with an intensity that unnerves and terrifies him in equal measure.
"Run, lad," Harwick breathes, but his sword is already rising to meet the threat.
The Barbarian King doesn't even slow. His right axe catches Harwick's blade in a parry that sends sparks flying, while his left sweeps around in a brutal arc. Harwick throws himself backward, the axe head passing inches from his throat, and rolls to his feet with the grace of a man half his age.
"Go!" Harwick shouts, engaging the Barbarian King in a desperate flurry of strikes.
But Bellamy can't move. Harwick is the finest swordsman in Mirn. He's taught Bellamy everything he knows about combat. And Bellamy cannot look away as his mentor is methodically taken apart.
The Barbarian King fights with a fluid brutality that is almost artistic, each movement flowing into the next with otherworldly precision. Within moments, Harwick is bleeding from a dozen small cuts, his breathing labored, his defense crumbling.
The end comes suddenly. Ivah feints high, then sweeps Harwick's legs with the flat of his axe. The general hits the ground hard, his sword and shield clattering out of his hands, and all Bellamy can see is the Barbarian King raising his axe to deal the final blow.
Bellamy steps forward almost without thinking, raising his sword in time to meet the axe as it falls.
The clang of their weapons meeting is almost deafening in his ears. It sounds like a finality he hadn't prepared for and he can see Harwick’s eyes widen in shock and despair as he realizes what is happening.
The Barbarian King's head turns toward him with deliberate slowness, those burning eyes taking in every detail—the golden lion on his breastplate, the telltale green eyes beneath his dented helm, the careful way he holds his father's sword.
"The Prince of Mirn," Ivah says, and there is something like amusement in his voice. "How thoughtful of you to deliver yourself."
He pulls his axe back and straightens to his full height. Up close, he is even more imposing—not just tall, but powerfully built, with scars crisscrossing his arms and a presence that seems to fill the space around him like a pack of wolves.
"If it's a fight you want, then fight me," Bellamy says, surprised by how steady his voice sounds.
"Bellamy, no!" Harwick struggles to his feet, blood running from a cut on his scalp.
But the Barbarian King is already nodding, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "How could I refuse such a generous offer?"
The battle seems to slow around them as word of the duel spreads like fire.
Mirn soldiers and Everitt warriors alike fall back, forming a rough circle.
Bellamy is dimly aware of the sudden quiet around them, broken only by the harsh breathing of exhausted fighters and the sound of his own heart beating loudly in his chest.
He raises his sword in a formal salute, the way Harwick has taught him. Ivah returns the gesture with his axes, the movement somehow elegant despite the weapons' crude design.
Then they begin to circle each other.
Bellamy has sparred with the best fighters in Mirn, has trained since childhood in the courtyard under Harwick's demanding eye. He is fast, skilled, and determined. But within the first exchange of blows, he knows he is hopelessly outmatched.
The Barbarian King moves like nothing Bellamy has ever faced, his axes weaving patterns in the air that seem impossible to dodge.
Bellamy manages to parry the first strike, the impact jarring his shoulders, but the second nearly takes his head off.
He ducks desperately, feeling the blade whistle past his ear, and tries a thrust toward Ivah's midsection.
The Barbarian King moves out of the way as though he's fighting a child, like Bellamy's attacks are an afterthought.
Bellamy spins, searching, and barely gets his sword up in time to block a crushing overhead strike that drives him to one knee.
The force of the blow sends shockwaves through his arms, numbing his fingers.
He rolls aside as the second axe splits the earth where he'd been kneeling, comes up with a wild swing that Ivah avoids with contemptuous ease.
"Is this the best you can do, little prince?" Ivah sneers at him, and he doesn't even sound winded. "Maybe your wounded general would have been better sport after all."
Bellamy doesn't waste breath on a reply. He presses forward, trying to use his speed to his advantage, but it is like fighting an impenetrable wall. Every attack meets steel, while Ivah's counterstrikes come from angles that Bellamy is only barely able to block.
A glancing blow from an axe handle sends Bellamy staggering, his ribs screaming in protest. He tastes copper in his mouth that tells him he's bitten his tongue.
Another strike, this one from the flat of Ivah's blade, catches him across the shoulder and spins him around.
His armor dents but holds, though the impact leaves his left arm partially numb.
Bellamy stumbles but keeps his feet, blood trickling from his nose inside his helm where the metal has been driven down against his face.
His vision blurs for a moment before clearing through the eyeslits.
He tries a desperate lunge, and Ivah's counter leaves a shallow cut along his sword arm that immediately begins leaking blood down his wrist, making his grip slippery.
Still he fights on.
Ivah seems to be toying with him now, each strike calculated to wound but not to kill.
A blow to Bellamy's thigh that leaves him limping.
A cut across his forearm that opens his mail.
Each impact drives home how completely outclassed he is, yet something in Ivah's dark eyes suggests the Barbarian King is. .. enjoying this.
Bellamy's helm rings like a bell as another blow strikes it, denting the metal and making his ears ring.
Blood runs down his scalp from where the padding has been crushed against a gash he doesn't remember receiving.
His breathing is harsh and ragged now, muffled by the confines of his helmet, his vision starting to tunnel from exhaustion and blood loss.
But still he fights.